[audience chanting "stephen"] >> stephen: thank you. thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. i just... i cannot thank you enough. we have been on vacation, and for the last two weeks i've had the chant that to myself. welcome to "the report." good to have you with us, everybody. nation, it's hard to believe, but this sunday is the tenth anniversary of september 11th attacks. which means we can't be more than five years away from finding saddam's wmds. [laughter] since that tragic day, the american government has done whatever is necessary to safeguard the home hasn't from enhanced interrogation to inventing the phrase "the homeland." [laughter] we even tried to find common ground with muslim extremists but electing one of them president. [laughter] over and over... over an over this man has proven that he is not serious about keeping us safe.

which brings us to my new segment "this week in national sec-oward-ty. folks, whenever the terrorists have come up with a new way to attack aair travel, the tsa has found new and innovative ways to overreact, so travelers can then relax and enjoy their two-foot by two-foot space next to a crying baby in a pressureized tube hurdling 40,000 feet in the air. but all this security is about to disappear thanks to homeland security chief janet napolitano. >> we hope that we will be able to make it easier for travelers. you won't have to take off so much, your shoes, your bell, everything as you go through the machine. >> stephen: what? if we don't take our shoes off, how will we know which little piggy went wee, wee, wee all the way to an al qaeda training

camp? has napolitano forgotten about the shoe bomb center he's not just an isolated nutd job. all terrorists have worn shoes at some point. that's why it's called shoe-ria law. and thanks to our vigilance, up until now america hasn't suffered another footwear-related act of war, except for jimmy choo's fall 2011 patent leather sandal pump, which declared a jihad on our notions of open-towed elegance. and folks, it only gets worse. because obama's tsa is abandoning our most effective weapon against terror, x-raying your junk. jim? >> fort wayne is one of 40 airports in the country getting a technology upgrade for its body scanner. >> the new software changes two things, first what the scanned image looks like. this is the old one. it shows a rendering of the person's actual body along with

any anomalies. this is the new one. everyone's body is the generic rendering and auntillies like something in your pocket show up as a jell-o block. -- yellow block. >> stephen: great. this will protect us if we get attacked by the gingerbread man. the key tool, folks, the key tool in our national security portfolio is ghostly images of our pee pees. it is easy for terrorists to disguise their facial features, but everyone knows there is no disguising your crotch face. every genital is as unique as a snowflake. side note: if your genitals are shaped like a snowflake, see a doctor immediately. now, folks, without forcing us to take off our shoes and undergoing full body scan, what is to stop a terrorist from boarding a plane wearing a shoe bomb on his wang?

[laughter] damn. that guy's wearing a size 13. what is next? letting people through security with four ounces of shampoo? the terrorists will be able to rinse and repeat. folks, in light of obama's lax security standards, i am now calling on all passengers to prove that you are sane, unthreatening travelers by doing what i do, getting completely naked in the airport security line and invite anyone in uniform to probe you with a rubber glove. and again, i want to extend my court-ordered apologies to the counter staff at cinnabun. [laughter and applause] nation, that frosting is hot. [laughter] and they are very generous with it. nation... [laughter]

[cheering and applause] i hope... i hope that was frosting. [laughter] nation, there is nothing... calm down. nation, there is nothing i love more than a good monoment. from mt. rushmore to the space needle to egypt's stirring tribute to the luxor hotel & casino in vegas, or recently a important new memorial was unveiled on the national mall honoring the reverend sir dr. milk , jr. he's not only been to the mountaintop, he's been glued to it. and i am an, pert on all things mlk because i was at his "i have a dream" speech inside my pregnant mother who attended. i have this pennant, okay, from the day to prove it. i could not be judged by the color of my skin because at the time i was technically translewis nt.

but folks, i was conan o'brien color. [laughter and applause] as we know... see you at the emmys, red. but there is some controversy around this memorial, folks, and not just because the sculpture mistakenly made him white. no. it is over a quotation from dr. king insciebed on the memorial. let's hear it from the man itself. >> yes, if you want to say that i was a drum major, say that i was a drum major for justice. say that i was a drum major for peace. i was a drum major for righteousness. >> stephen: stirring. humble. and if we're being brutally honest, a little wordy. which is why on the monoment the quote was paraphrased so that it would fit on the north side of the statue. it now reads, "i was a drum major for justice, peace and

righteousness." boom. short, pithy, to the point, not dr. king's point, but still. you now what they say, brevity is the soul of saving money on chiseling fees. but some people out there don't appreciate dr. king getting the reader's digest treatment. civil rights activist and walking gravitas geyser maya angelou spoke out against the rewarding saying, "the quote makes dr. martin luther king look like an arrogant twit. he was anything but that. he was far too profound a man for that four-letter word to apply." or as she'll one day be paraphrased, dr. martin luther king, an ar gantd twit, he was a four-letter word. so everybody, everybody please just calm down. this is a memorial. it's about how we remember dr. king, no matter what he may

have actually said. i know my personal favorite dr. king quote has always been, "who you going to call, ghostbusters." if anything, if anything, folks, memorial architect ed jackson still left the quote a little too long. i say trim the fat down to, "i was a drum major." you can even add one of those fancy hats. hey, hey, he did lead a march. we'll be right back. [cheering and applause] >> thank.

welcome back, everybody. nation, before our august break, i was trying to get to the bottom of the huge scandal rocking the republican race for president. and i'm not talking about the rumor that candidate thaddeus mccotter's real name is cotter mcthaddeus. new york i'm talking about iowa's parry-with-an-a gate. you all know the details. oh, yeah. but in case you're some sort of cave man just thawed from a million-year icy sleep, let me catch you up. first of all, this is tv. tv good. secondly, the colbert nation and i recently formed colbert super pac, allowing us to raise and spend unlimited amounts of

money. technically my lawyer says we're limited to the amount of money that currently exists in the world, but he's working on that. now, we used our money for the first time to run ads in advance of the iowa straw poll supporting writing in texas governor rick perry, and to distinguish ourselveses from the other super pac supporting perry, we asked supporters to write in his name with an a, and if they're feeling really ambitious, dot the "i" in rick with another "a." rick parry came in sixth over all and was the number-one write in candidate with 718 votesment but folks, every silver lining has a dark cloud. the iowa g.o.p. has refused to release the write-in resulted, so we don't know how many of those 718 votes were with an a. was it 717? as low as 716? anything is possible.

so i turned to the cobail report's affiliate in iowa, woi abc 5 where des moines turns for des news. i'm talking about the entire news team. co-an cores amanda kranz and chief meteorologist brad edwards certified as central's most accurate meteorologist for five years and who's counting? let's not forget intrepid cup reporter katie eastman, whose proven track record garners all the plumb assignments. >> jessica, iowa state students have a long list of parking complaints, but next week there will be a new program that could make driving places more convenient. >> stephen: now if only iowa would come up with a place for people to go. [laughter] well,, i was away... i was away for two weeks, but i am confident woi was hard at work

tearing the lid off this scandal because they sent me an update in the form of an e-mail today from woi station manager and my men's room emmy fluffer ray cole that's just... let's just give it a read here. okie smoky. all right. it starts out, stephen. good started. that's me. "abc 5 news's amanda krenz questioned whether or not the straw poll results might be subject to a tbeed of information act request. the short answer is no. the long answer is nnnnnnnnnnno. is that it? maybe it's continued on the other side. is there anything? damn. okay. well, still, i want to thank everybody at the woi news team, particularly their new

investigative journalist who is apparently a magic 8 ball. we'll check in with you guys again for the caucus. we'll be right back. [cheering and applause] >> steph,

everybody. my guest tonight has a new book, "rock the casbah: rage and rebellion across the islamic world." forget the islamic world, i bet the clash is pissed. please welcome robin wright. [cheering and applause] thank you. hey, ms. wright, good to see you again. welcome back. now, you say "rage and rebellion in the islamic world." is that a good thing that they are raging and rebelled because aren't we one of the things they're raging and rebelled,

even condi, latasha does the und states benefit from this rage and rebellion? >> absolutely. this something that should have been happening a long time ago. we've been supporting a lot of the autocrats in the region. in order to win the war on terrorism, it's important we get muslim people behind us, muslim people on the streets taking initiative. >> stephen: but we already did that by invading iraq and getting rid of saddam hussein. >> and that went so well. >> stephen: well, we won. we won there. we went in there. we got rid of the bad guy, unless you'd like saddam back. just go ahead and say it. you want saddam back. >> new york but... >> stephen: okay. good. then they should be thanking us. didn't we send a message to the arab world that this is how you change things, and they went, jesus, we could do that ourselves, except minus the jesus part. >> they actually did. >> stephen: did they really? >> no. in fact, they were rejecting the model we established in both

iraq and afghanistan. it didn't workment ten years later we're still in both countries. ten years later there are more suicide bombers in iraq than we have ever suffered from. greater deaths in afghanistan last month than at any time since we went inch the extraordinary thing that's happening in the region is the muslims are taking proactive steps to challenge extremism to, challenge autocrats and create a whole different environment in the region. and that's something that we are unable to do ourselves. we're great as a military fighting extremists. >> stephen: that's what gunboat diplomacy is about. it's about projecting power into an area of the world and then, you know, shaking [bleeped] up. you don't think that we in any way helped change the equation in the middle east with the actions of the last ten years? >> it was not what we did. it was the fact that people rejected the extremism by al qaeda, by osama bin laden. they paid a far greater price than we did. it was their rejection of extremism that's really turned the situation around in the

region, and it's created a different kind of culture, created playwrights and poets and rappers who are all challenging regimes in a way that we can't do with any credibility. guns alone are not going to change the reality on the ground in the middle east. >> let's talk about what guns have been able to achieve in the middle east. okay. we're ten years after 9/11. osama bin laden dead. saddam hussein dead. abu musab al-zarqawi dead. khalid shake mohamed in custody. petreaus doesn't need to be out there anymore. however you feel about how this might have politically affected things in the middle east, how we might have been rejected by the man on the street, we have won the war on terror. >> not yet. >> stephen: well, we are winning. we are winning then. >> are we winning, or are the people in the region winning? >> stephen: we are winning because they didn't wage the war. it's our war, we waged the war. we got all these guys, and you say that al qaeda is... is al

qaeda all busted up? >> no al qaeda is still a threat, but it's increasingly passe. >> stephen: passe? >> passe. >> stephen: they're not a pair of jeans. they're a criminal organization that is out to destroy the united states. what do you mean passe? they don't have support anymore? >> in egypt, a bunch of kids got out on the streets and did an -- in 18 days what osama bin laden and his former number two, now number one, an egyptian, couldn't do in 30 years. this is an extraordinary moment. there's a whole different type of activism, whole different way of doing things. a rejection of extremist tactics and violence, whether it's the kind of gunboat diplomacy we engage in or the extremism of al qaeda. >> stephen: you make an egive lands of gunboat extreme si and... >> neither one can win. >> stephen: ten years ago on that terrible day, some people in the middle east were dancing

in the streets after the fall of the taliban. would that happen again today? >> absolutely not, but i don't think that was the majority of people in the region. >> stephen: some people were. people were sell secretary of state breathing the victory of -- celebrating the victory of al qaeda. >> you can't stereotype 1.5 million people. >> stephen: oh, yes, i can, they're dangerous and they make very poor americans. >> not true. but since 2007, there has been such an extraordinary wave of change throughout the region, we're really witnessing the beginning of the beginning of something entirely different. and it plays out in the uprising on the street. it plays out in the culture that is giving a different voice. and we're seeing what is likely to be... this is the most epic convulsion and the most political, important political turning point of the early 21st century.

>> are muslims... the most important question is because i need to know who to stay mad at, are muslims still our enemy? >> no. >> stephen: is who is next? lutherans? i'm ready to jack garrison keeler tomorrow. if it's not muslims, if it's not muslim, who is it? >> well, look, extremism is always going to be our enemy, no matter who engages in it, and there are all kinds of different extremists around the world. our greatest challenge today is actually economic and the forces that are challenging, whether it's our inability to deal with debt issues, whether it's our inability to help people because there is no sense of a future. that's where we're really vulnerable. >> so you say debt could be our biggest enemy? >> well, i think it could derail a lot of it in terms of what we want in terms of creating a different kind of political reality, as well. >> >> stephen: should we be invading visa? >> not a bad idea.

thank you so much. robin wright, the book is "rock the casbah." we'll be right back. >> stephen:e

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